Narcissistic mothers can label their babies as being “bad”. The reason for this is because the narcissistic mother will not give the emotional support that a baby needs this will make the baby feel very unsafe and might cry a lot to try to get their mother to respond to them in a loving and caring way. The fact that the baby is crying a lot of the time annoys the mother because she thinks that it makes her “look like a bad mother” and she will blame the baby rather than try to understand what the baby needs.
She will not look at her baby and see a little bundle of joy and innocence reaching out to have their needs met in the only way they know (by crying), she will project intention on to the baby and think to herself that they are only crying to “make her feel guilty”. There are other reasons why a narcissistic mother thinks her baby is bad:
- She will see the baby “competing” with her for attention
- She will resent the lack of sleep
- She will feel that the baby is taking her for granted
- She will resent the routines like feeding, nappy changing and bedtimes
- She will see illness of any sort as a form of bad behviour and to annoy/make her feel guilty
- Narcissist are all about their needs and to have to focus on her baby is an exhausting and tiresome investment of time, energy and effort. It is also relentless the baby has needs every single day and cannot be put in the toy box when she gets bored with it.
- She also has to spend a lot of energy into training the baby that her needs come first, and that any deviation from this attention will be punishable. To do this she has to intimidate, break the will, brainwash, bully and silence her baby.
- The narcissistic mother can often breast feed for too long because having a baby feed from her provides comfort to the mother and it means that the baby is more dependent on her. It also means that the baby is less able to self soothe and therefore remains almost exclusively focused on the mother. Breast feeding for too long also makes the baby easier to control because the mother can threaten abandonment and no mother = no food and is therefore a death threat which in turn will make the baby very, very reactive to the mothers needs and demands.